Development thread for 1.5

[AbsintheRed]

I love RFCE. I have been playing it for 2 solid months.

Got around to Scotland this week. Thought it would be fun to "replace" William (analogous to the Burgundian French, Cordobans, etc). Scotland was hard - limited cities spots, little land, and poor land (moor, etc). Every other game I can guide my nation to the top and this time not so much. At least the mercs are good

Spoiler merc :

.

Maybe Scotland was intended in-game to maintain their Auld Alliance (until they need to take Bretagne) and not rocket to the top.

Others have commented on the forts requirement for UHV #1. It did feel like workers were doing idle tasks. But I learned - others correct me - a salt mine on the Isle of Man doesn't give salt but a fort did put it into my available resources. Forts did shave off a few turns for boats to cross.

Mainly though, the Auld Alliance is a super tough UHV, as others mentioned.
From start to 1560 you have 210 turns.

Assuming France doesn't collapse (and I was lucky, I had the biggest France in-game I've ever seen, conquering Burgundy, northern Germany, parts of Spain/Aragon), you have
2 points max good relations and 1 OB x 210 = 630 points.

Defensive pacts only are around for ~75 turns of the allotted time = 150 more points
Moreover, you can't sign a defensive pact in general because "your land is too far away". I had to conquer London (red stability zone) to get some tiles by France-proper.

Even if you have 9 resources traded, that is 3 ppt = 600 points.
(in general you can trade sheep, barley, honey, copper to France, for hopefully 4 of their resources in return, but note the barley, honey, copper will be your only sources).

So this 1380 points, best case.
Which means you need 1120 points from mutual wars, or 2 ppt for that, so you need 560 turns of mutual war. You will get some of that from England, in general this means you have to be at mutual war with at least 2.5 civilizations for the entire game from spawn to 1560.

With 100 turns to go to UHV #2 I was at 671 (I had mutual wars with Norway, England, Denmark) solely for the purpose of appeasing France.

I didn't want to repeat this, and facing certain failure, I resorted to WB to bring France in to war against everyone I declared on, submitted here for a chuckle.

Spoiler france :

Perhaps the next version (I realize RFCE 1.5 is just out) could center on net relationship points added per turn. E.g. above I have a +13 with France (still seemingly low after giving them resources, gold, etc). But +2/turn for good relations is maybe not enough, and we can reward the player for bumping this ratio up to cement the alliance. Some discussions focus on 1000 or 1500 which I think is more reasonable (especially consider in most games I have played France has collapsed).

Thanks again for RFCE

Thanks for the detailed feedback!
It's always great to read about people playing and enjoying the mod this much!

Will get into updating some of the UHVs soon enough, there are already quite a few things that came up in the past few months.
The Auld Alliance will definitely be improved in some form.
Even though 1.5 has just been released, I will have quite some modding time during the second half of June and July, so there will be a huge number of changes in the next couple months too!

But I learned - others correct me - a salt mine on the Isle of Man doesn't give salt but a fort did put it into my available resources. Forts did shave off a few turns for boats to cross.

It's a bug if the Quarry improvement didn't connect the island to your trade network.
Actually I recently added a similar function to Realim Invictus, and I'm pretty sure it works there correctly.
Will test it out, I'm curious what went wrong here.

 

[dmd175]

It's always great to read about people playing and enjoying the mod this much!

Kudos to you, this mod is amazing, and I'm saying that having played a lot of Sengoku mod and FFH2.

It's a bug if the Quarry improvement didn't connect the island to your trade network.

Is it a bug? What I did was put a quarry on it with a road over it. How would that connect to anything, since it's surrounded by sea (yes it was in my cultural borders b/c I improved it) and has no harbor connection to another city, and no road connection.
But does the game treat a fort - since it allows naval passage - as some type of harbor-connection? (in addition to giving the resource)

 

[AbsintheRed]

Kudos to you, this mod is amazing, and I'm saying that having played a lot of Sengoku mod and FFH2.

Thanks! But the mod is not my creation only, there were/are many other people contibuting it to as well.
Though I did spend more time on RFCE that I would be willing to admit to any non-civver

Is it a bug? What I did was put a quarry on it with a road over it. How would that connect to anything, since it's surrounded by sea (yes it was in my cultural borders b/c I improved it) and has no harbor connection to another city, and no road connection.
But does the game treat a fort - since it allows naval passage - as some type of harbor-connection? (in addition to giving the resource)

I added it about a year ago IIRC, the goal was to improve those annoying situations where small islands could not be proper part of your trade network.
Actually there were questions about in the RI thread too, just wrote this a couple days ago, parts of it are probably relevant here too:

It's a little more difficult than that, since the whole part-of-trade-network mechanics is primarily based on cities.
In a nutshell:
The game sets the map into areas (with islands always being in separate land areas).
A tile is only part of a given city's trade network, if it has a road/river, and it is connected to the city with either of those.
Cities on the other hand can connect to each other through coastal and later ocean trade routes (with the given techs), but that's the only solution for connecting your trade network through water tiles.
So in the vanilla game, each island can only be the proper part of a trade network if it has a city on it.
This is definitely an oversight... but not so clear how could be solved perfectly.

My solution is a hack which overrides the trade route connection between areas, so tiles in small enough areas will be automatically part of your trade network with an improvement and a road.
But it is only meant for very small islands which are fairly close to another area you own, where you wouldn't really want to settle under any circumstances.
If the size restriction wasn't there, it would directly affect the way base trade networks work on all areas. So an improvement would automatically be connected to all your cities if it had a road on it, even if it was very far away from all existing road systems. Obviously this isn't a valid option.

Maybe I can add some further restrictions though.
Ideally the best thing would be to be able to check only coastal tiles of those areas where you do not have a city, or something along these lines.
It's not trivial though, especially since performance is also an important factor in trade network calculations.

 

[Baron03]

Not sure where to put this, but here is a WBS file where semi-desert terrain and accurate island features have been added to the map. The one issue with the semi-desert terrain is that I relied on the Koppen climate map for accuracy, but I did not replace any grassland or all plains tiles because that would probably affect gameplay. It was mostly added in the Levant, Northern Africa, Anatolia, and Spain. More could probably be added to balance out plains and desert tiles, but this is a start.

I did this several months ago, but I didn't save any file. There were only screenshots.

 

[AbsintheRed]

Not sure where to put this, but here is a WBS file where semi-desert terrain and accurate island features have been added to the map. The one issue with the semi-desert terrain is that I relied on the Koppen climate map for accuracy, but I did not replace any grassland or all plains tiles because that would probably affect gameplay. It was mostly added in the Levant, Northern Africa, Anatolia, and Spain. More could probably be added to balance out plains and desert tiles, but this is a start.

I did this several months ago, but I didn't save any file. There were only screenshots.

It's perfectly fine in this thread. Thanks!

 

[cmakk1012]

Just got back into playing again, and I'm wondering about Genoa's stability map.

Genoa has Ifriqiya as Contested, which honestly doesn't make a lot of sense to me. They did hold one island off of the coast for two centuries, but they never made inroads in mainland Tunisia, nor did they ever try. The player can own three large cities there without too much trouble in a very ahistorical way. I'd argue the province should be Foreign to them; if Sicily gets added in they're the ones with claims to Tunisia.

To balance this out, I would argue that the provinces of Thrakesion, Armeniakon, and maybe Paphlagonia in Anatolia should become Contested for Genoa. During Byzantium's decline in the 13th-15th centuries Genoa held cities like Smyrna and Samsounta for trade. If Constantinople is Contested, of which they only ever owned a quarter, Genoa should certainly have claims to the cities they owned (however briefly) in full.

 

[AbsintheRed]

Just got back into playing again, and I'm wondering about Genoa's stability map.

Genoa has Ifriqiya as Contested, which honestly doesn't make a lot of sense to me. They did hold one island off of the coast for two centuries, but they never made inroads in mainland Tunisia, nor did they ever try. The player can own three large cities there without too much trouble in a very ahistorical way. I'd argue the province should be Foreign to them; if Sicily gets added in they're the ones with claims to Tunisia.

To balance this out, I would argue that the provinces of Thrakesion, Armeniakon, and maybe Paphlagonia in Anatolia should become Contested for Genoa. During Byzantium's decline in the 13th-15th centuries Genoa held cities like Smyrna and Samsounta for trade. If Constantinople is Contested, of which they only ever owned a quarter, Genoa should certainly have claims to the cities they owned (however briefly) in full.

Fair points!
Also, I'm back from the summer vacations (arrived home yesterday), so the next modding phase will start in a couple days.
As I already mentioned, I plan to put out 1.6 relatively soon, the following period has some bigger amount of time reserved for RFCE.

 

[AtlantaMarty]

Fair points!
Also, I'm back from the summer vacations (arrived home yesterday), so the next modding phase will start in a couple days.
As I already mentioned, I plan to put out 1.6 relatively soon, the following period has some bigger amount of time reserved for RFCE.

Not sure if this is the right thread for these questions for @AbsintheRed, but I'm not sure where else to put them.
1. Since you're already using the Semidesert terrain from SoI, have you considered just importing the rest of the terrain graphics from it? The current setup leads to the plains and semidesert terrain looking strange when placed near each other.
2. Are you still planning to eventually switch over to the 146x96 map you started creating in the other thread?

 

[AbsintheRed]

Fair points!
Also, I'm back from the summer vacations (arrived home yesterday), so the next modding phase will start in a couple days.
As I already mentioned, I plan to put out 1.6 relatively soon, the following period has some bigger amount of time reserved for RFCE.

In retrospect, timing for this post was perfect (life is ironic, as always ) - just in a few days after posting it some new real-life opportunities arose.
The last 3 months saw some bigger changes in my life: moving to a new city with my gf, starting at a great new job.
As you can imagine, this first period was pretty hectic on all fronts; but now that everything is getting more calm, I'm starting to come back to RFCE too
Was really looking forward to being able to continue the updates on the mod.

Compared to the period before the last release modding will be somewhat slow at first, but there will be some commits (like the most recent revision 1271) at least every couple weeks.
Also, I'm now steadily available and more active on the forums, and I expect to get back at full modding speed after a few more months!

Cheers:
Absinthe

 

[PinkPallin]

Well, that's great news!

 

[The Turk]

@AbsintheRed

What will be the main (major) features of 1.6?

 

[AbsintheRed]

@AbsintheRed

What will be the main (major) features of 1.6?

The plans for 1.6 didn't really change.
The biggest things are the map updates, then the province changes, which is followed by the various UHV improvements we already talked about.
At least these are the ones I definitely want to include, but as always, lots of other things will surely come up during the development of these

 

[DC123456789]

Suggestion for the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople text:

"Our armies have triumphed and now Constantinople, the Queen of Cities, is in our hands! As the new Kayser-i Rum [alternatively, "heirs to the Roman Empire"], we are clearly destined to dominate the world! Stability is on the rise in our realm!"

 

[gilgames]

We are happy that you returned!
Howevereyou could write a line for us: "Big IRL changes, will be busy for a while." its not much.
I was kinda dissapointed, that you said you are back, just to dissapear in two days again.
So now lets focus on the mod.

 

[Baron03]

It's great to hear that you're back! Congrats on the move and new job

 

[AbsintheRed]

We are happy that you returned!
Howevereyou could write a line for us: "Big IRL changes, will be busy for a while." its not much.
I was kinda dissapointed, that you said you are back, just to dissapear in two days again.
So now lets focus on the mod.

Yeah, you are right of course. Sry, should have been more clear about it.
It's hard to see it in advance though, how much time will I have exactly. I mean, I always planned to post at least a couple minor updates in the meantime (which piled up into r1271 in the end), and didn't entirely disappear from the forum either.
Nevertheless, should have said that change of plans, expect less activity from me for a couple months.

It's great to hear that you're back! Congrats on the move and new job

Thanks!
Actually we are not that enthusiastic about the move part.
Budapest is great for many reasons, but we just love my home town, Szeged

 

[gilgames]

I can show you around here

 

[Titoudeff]

Great job on this mod ! Looking forward to further developpement !

I don't know if it's the right place to make a request but IMO, removing a city's religion with persecution shouldn't remove its wonders or their effects.
One obvious example is the Mezquita, the Mosquee of Cordoba that was transformed into a Cathedral. Also, the Spanish inquisition didn't remove the Alhambra and the garden of Al-Andalus AFAIK.
Thus, I believe that wonders corresponding to a religion that was cleansed from a city should stay and keep their effects.
This doesn't make much sense otherwise and it can be frustrating to destroy the wonders that cordobans built before for example.
The very least would be that they remain in the cities with a minor effect (GPP points and culture) or even for pure architectural purposes for that matter.

Cheers !

 

[El Bogus]

I don't know if it's the right place to make a request.

It is!

The very least would be that they remain in the cities with a minor effect (GPP points and culture) or even for pure architectural purposes for that matter.

I think that would be a very good idea. It's a punishment for the persecuting player but it's a comprehensible one. Also, if you spread the corresponding religion back to the city, the wonders could get their effects back.

 

[AbsintheRed]

Great job on this mod ! Looking forward to further developpement !

Thanks, and welcome to the mod!
Development continues, the promised resource changes will be up soon, probably at the weekend.

The very least would be that they remain in the cities with a minor effect (GPP points and culture) or even for pure architectural purposes for that matter.

I think that would be a very good idea. It's a punishment for the persecuting player but it's a comprehensible one. Also, if you spread the corresponding religion back to the city, the wonders could get their effects back.

This would be rather hard technically though.

I don't know if it's the right place to make a request but IMO, removing a city's religion with persecution shouldn't remove its wonders or their effects.
One obvious example is the Mezquita, the Mosquee of Cordoba that was transformed into a Cathedral. Also, the Spanish inquisition didn't remove the Alhambra and the garden of Al-Andalus AFAIK.
Thus, I believe that wonders corresponding to a religion that was cleansed from a city should stay and keep their effects.
This doesn't make much sense otherwise and it can be frustrating to destroy the wonders that cordobans built before for example.

On the other hand, it might work to leave the wonders in the city, without any changes. Right now I don't even remember why I chose to remove them on persecution, if that was an actual decision or just followed the easier route